The present invention relates to processing data from an input device. In particular, the present invention relates to performing tasks in a commerce application based on input data.
There are a number of different input devices that communicate with a computer. For example, retail input devices can include a keyboard for manual input, a barcode scanner for scanning barcodes and a magnetic stripe reader for reading a magnetic stripe on a credit card. Additionally, pointer devices, touch screens and other devices can be used. A commerce based application such as a retail software application running on the computer uses input data from these devices for a number of different tasks, for example to process a transaction.
Typically, software applications require a prompt or other indication of a particular input that the software application can expect. This prompting requires additional tasks to be performed by a user. Typically, the prompting is provided by a form of “touch” input device, where a user has to physically touch the device, such as a mouse, keyboard or touch screen. These additional input operations lead to increased time in processing a transaction, mistakes and training costs. For example, in a simple one-item transaction, a user will need to prompt the application to expect input related to one or more items for purchase, expect input related to customer information and expect input related to a tender used for the transaction. Thus, there is a need to provide an efficient manner for performing tasks based on input from an input device.